Athidhi (అతిథి) (2007) Review

Athidhi (Telugu: అతిథి ; English: Guest) is a 2007 Telugu film starring Mahesh Babu and Amrita Rao, directed by Surender Reddy and produced by G. Ramesh Babu, brother of Mahesh Babu under their banner Krishna Pictures Private Limited. It was released on 18 October 2007. It was dubbed into Tamil as Thani Kaattu Raja, and into Hindi as International Khiladi:The Iron Man.


Trivia ::

Athithi, an orphan is implicated in the murder and sent to jail for 13 years. Once out, it becomes his mission to trace and kill Kaiser, the boy who had murdered Amrita's parents. The romantic element comes in the form of Amrita who is an art student in Delhi. Though the twosome meet in Delhi, the story moves to Hyderabad and it is here the rest of the story unravels.

There is a love story interwoven into the story, yet, Athidhi is essentially a revenge drama and the action scenes are the main highlight of the film. The entire look of the film is rich and the makers have spent ostensibly on sets for the song sequences. The only drawback is the climax, when Mahesh goes on a killing spree. While the makers have used special effects to make it look less gory, it nevertheless gets a bit too violent.

Plot ::

An orphan boy, named Sunil, wanders through all of Delhi looking for a job. When selling balloons, he sees a girl and gives her a free balloon. A few days later, during a storm, the girl finds the boy getting soaked and gives him an umbrella. The umbrella blows into a place nearby, where the girls parents are headed. The boy stops their car and indicates them about the dangerous path ahead destroyed by the storm. As the boy rescues the girl's parents, the boy gets adopted by the parents. They name the boy "Athidhi" which means "guest". One day, while driving Athidhi to a hostel, they are stopped by an aspiring cop named Kaiser, a Psychopath, who mugs them, and shoots the parents. In his rage, Athidhi lunges after the teen managing to take the teen's gun. Nearby witnesses see Athidhi with a gun and the girl's parents and think that Athidhi killed them. The police come and arrest Athidhi. The girl also thinks that it was Athidhi who killed her parents and starts to hate him and thinks that she will never see him again.

Thirteen years later, Athidhi (now Mahesh Babu) gets out of jail, and is now in search of the Psychopath, teen who has killed the girl's parents and the girl. In Delhi, local goons are feared by Athidhi, as he becomes a hurdle for their illegal operation. At one instance, he runs across a girl named Amrita (Amrita Rao) chased by stalkers from her college. Amrita and Athidhi meet many times. Amrita starts to like Athidhi, but has to go back to Hyderabad before she can confess her love. When she goes to try tell him that she is leaving Athidhi gets annoyed. He continuously tells her to leave him alone, when she keeps asking to get some coffee and slaps her. She runs away crying. Later Athidhi goes to Amrita to say sorry but only finds her friend. She tells him that Amrita just wanted to tell him that she's leaving. They then go to the cemetery seeing if she is there. Amrita's friend then explains that a boy named Athidhi killed Amrita's parents when she was young and Amrita goes to the cemetery to see their graves all the time. Athidhi then finds out that she was the same girl that he met in his childhood and leaves for Hyderabad to find her.

When Athidhi also arrives to Hyderabad, and decides to stay with Amrita's family, he learns that a Mafia leader and kidnapper named Kaiser is feared there. Later, after few events, Athidhi realizes that Kaiser was the psychopath teen who killed the girl's parents. Now Kaiser is trying to kill Amrita. Athidhi stops two attempts by Kaiser to murder Amrita. Meanwhile, Officer Ajay (Murali Sharma) is trying to track down Kaiser. Ajay dies in an explosion in his house, which was planned by Kaiser. Athidhi figures out later on that Ajay is none other than Kaiser. Ajay's real name is Kaiser. Before Kaiser's house blew up, Kaiser managed to escape. When the MLA realizes that Ajay's real name is Kaiser, the MLA, after succumbing to shock, dies with a heart attack. Athidhi manages to kill one of Kaiser's men. Kaiser then kidnaps Amrita and her cousin. Kaiser kills Amrita's cousin. Then Kaiser leads Amrita to a dungeon and calls Athidi and tells him that he will kill Amrita if Athidhi doesn't rescue her in 12 hours. Then Athidi kidnaps his brother, and trades for Amrita. Amrita is severely cut and stuck in a certain air tank (Kaiser planned), but is rescued. Kaiser is killed. Athidi and Amrita unite, realising he wasn't the one who killed her parents.

Cast ::

*Mahesh Babu ... Athidi

*Amrita Rao ... Amrita

*Murali Sharma ... Inspector Ajay Sastry/Kaiser

*Nassar ... Amritha's uncle

*Kota Srinivasa Rao... Maccha Srinu

*Ashish Vidyarthi... Danny Bhai

*Subbaraju... Ganni Bhai

*Venu Madhav... Cameo

*Malaika Arora Khan ... Item number In The Song "Rathraina"

Crew ::

*Director: E.H. Reddy

*Producer: G. Ramesh Babu

*Music: Mani Sharma

*Cinematography: Sameer Reddy

*Editor: Gowtham Raju

*Fights: Stun Siva

*Audience: Mahesh fans

Box Office ::

The film was released worldwide with 500 prints.

The film opened with a gross collection of  12.5 crores in the first week of its release.

Soundtrack ::

No. Title
1. "Khabaddarani"
2. "Gona Gona"
3. "Satyam Emito"
4. "Khiladi Koona"
5. "Rathraina"
6. "Valla Valla"

- Source 

Wikipedia